Magic-only Speedrun (Sorcery, Hexes, Miracles, Pyromancy)

[Casul Gamer]

I know a lot of people think magic is overpowered (and I thought the same when I first started playing), but now I'm finding magic weaker than melee. Especially since the overpowered spells have been nerfed. I started playing DS2 after the patches so I'm not sure which ones have been nerfed other than Resonant Soul, Great Resonant soul, Lightning spear, Great Lightning spear, and Soul Geyser.

Whenever I've tried doing a magic character recently, I've ended up mostly only using melee weapons because they seemed to work better so I was thinking of restricting my character to only magic. Or maybe just using melee weapons only on bosses and enemies resistant to my damage type. Since this is a speedrun, I'm not sure how easy it is to go around collecting pyromancy seeds for my secondary weapon, but it is possible to get +10 pyro flame before Drangleic.

I'm not really doing speedruns competitively (or I'd just use the rapier for all my runs), but I'm still trying to get better times so I'd like some suggestions. I haven't really done much of the DLCs, but I did recently find how to get more twinkling titanite (which is what most of the best casting tools upgrade with). I'm doing both Any% and Old Ones%. For those not familiar with speedruns, Any% involves getting 1 million soul memory to open Shrine of winter while old ones% requires killing the 4 main bosses.

[Binkus]

Hexing is still pretty nasty. There are barely any enemies that resist it.
You just gotta pump up your Int and Fai (Dark scales w/ both) and enchant your catalyst with the desired element. Lightning Spear and GLS got a huge nerf in casts and damage.
I'm playing a Pyromancer right now, so if you're looking for a hybrid sort of character, it doesn't really take much int and fai pumping and focuses more on melee

[Lucan Fenix]

You could try getting your friends and making a 4 man playthrough with that theme. A hexer or a warlock, a priest, a Sorcorer and a pyromancer.

[Dusk of Oolacile]

If you're doing a hex-type run, I suggest 2 things.

1. Get to Felkin asap for the Sunset Staff.
2. Go for the Rotten first. You'll get a darknight stone early, and access to Shulva, where you can pick up tons of Twinkling Titanite to upgrade the staff.

Of course it will be very far from conventional speedruns, but of course there is a reason why it is usually done using melee, not magic.

[Casul Gamer]

Thanks for the suggestions.
Yeah, I know all the speedruns use melee (except an all bosses route before the hexes were nerfed), but the reason I got interested with speedruns is because I like playing a lot of different builds and trying different weapons and my normal playthroughs were just too time consuming.

I'm sort of unclear about lightning spear nerfs. I know they initially reduced damage and casts, but I thought maybe they fixed it later on so that only casts were reduced and damage was back to normal. I'm also wondering with a hex character if I should upgrade archdrake chime to cast lightning or just upgrade priest's chime and wait for caitha to do Hexes.

With sorcerer I'm not sure if I should try to get Witchtree branch early or just upgrade sorcerer's staff until I get staff of wisdom. Also if it's worth going through no-man's wharf to get sorcery and pyromancy flame.

Pyromancy seems pretty good. I just need to figure out a route to collect all the seeds. I also need to decide whether to take the time to do executioner's chariot. Aside from the pyromancy spells Tichy sells, the robe he drops gives extra souls (more than Tseldora robe). There's also a seed right near the entrance. I really hate that boss fight so I tend to avoid it even on my slow runs.

Sunset staff with dark orb is pretty dope (although a dark infused weapon would probably still be better). I'm sort of conflicted about the resonant soul spells. The combination of upgrading a chime (when I'm just going end up switching to Caitha later), the number of attunement slots, and the soul cost (100 for resonant soul and 500 for GRS). I think it's good those spells were nerfed since they did a lot of damage even to bosses resistant to dark, but I feel like maybe they nerfed those and lightning spear too much.

[Pyramid Bread]

You can punch with a chime in your hand or swing your staff for pretty decent damage against most mobs, are you averse to that?

Also spell tools like the sanctum shield (and to a lesser degree the disc chime) can potentially be very handy if you don't mind some shield-bashing. The disc chime is a less cheesy way to go about this since it doesn't block like the sanctum shield blocks when you bash with it.

Further, since you will be speedrunning I'm assuming you will avoid killing many of the mobs so early-mid game should be a breeze even with spells alone.

Miracles like GLS are very powerful in PVE and PVP but you get hardly any casts unless you wear a northern band or crank ATN quite high. I'm not sure if miracles that aren't healing spells or self buffs are worth it if you are speed running tbh.

However, heavenly thunder is probably worth getting since it does massive dmg with an upgraded chime and can hit big, slow bosses multiple times (rotten I'm looking at you XD). It also has a decent amount of casts. And it's an AOE spell...

And you will need quite a few AOE spells for crowd control. It will be worth getting a few copies of scraps of life since it's probably the best AOE spell in the game, and fire tempest or fire storm are also good.

Anyway sounds like a fun speedrun, best of luck

[Hatrix_]

İlk olarak Taint Destroyer tarafından gönderildi:

(Dark scales w/ both)

Dark scales off the lower stat, not both. If you had 10/10, 10/99, or 99/10, you'd get the same amount of DarkBNS damage.

İlk olarak SuperLotus97 tarafından gönderildi:

I'm not sure which ones have been nerfed other than Resonant Soul, Great Resonant soul, Lightning spear, Great Lightning spear, and Soul Geyser.

I've heard that Resonant Weapon was nerfed but I haven't tested it personally, I don't use hexes much. Supposedly the damage was nerfed to do the same as Dark Weapon, therefore making Resonant Weapon obsolete because Dark Weapon doesn't consume souls and you can carry more of them.

I would like a confirmation on this however.

İlk olarak punishment for decadence tarafından gönderildi:

You can punch with a chime in your hand or swing your staff for pretty decent damage against most mobs, are you averse to that?

Also spell tools like the sanctum shield (and to a lesser degree the disc chime) can potentially be very handy if you don't mind some shield-bashing. The disc chime is a less cheesy way to go about this since it doesn't block like the sanctum shield blocks when you bash with it.

Disc Chime is actually a pretty damn powerful melee weapon for an early game caster. It requires no STR / DEX to wield, only 18 FTH. You can swing that sucker for 200 - 300 damage when you get it, because of the high faith scaling. I usually speedrun and get it when playing a faith build early game, it's pretty good damage provided you know when to use it and time your swings with it. The range is super short, so you can't over-extend terribly when using it.

Sanctum Shield is the bigger, better brother of the Disc Chime.

İlk olarak SuperLotus97 tarafından gönderildi:

I'm sort of unclear about lightning spear nerfs. I know they initially reduced damage and casts, but I thought maybe they fixed it later on so that only casts were reduced and damage was back to normal. I'm also wondering with a hex character if I should upgrade archdrake chime to cast lightning or just upgrade priest's chime and wait for caitha to do Hexes.

Nah, they never changed the damage back. Don't waste time with normal Lightning Spears, they're pretty cancer. GLSs are still good though.

If you want Idol's Chime, just buy the faith spells you want and murder her to be honest, if you're using hexes, you're not going to use much from her for very long. The Saint's Hood is worse than the Hexer's Hood.

İlk olarak SuperLotus97 tarafından gönderildi:

With sorcerer I'm not sure if I should try to get Witchtree branch early or just upgrade sorcerer's staff until I get staff of wisdom. Also if it's worth going through no-man's wharf to get sorcery and pyromancy flame.

Pyromancy seems pretty good. I just need to figure out a route to collect all the seeds. I also need to decide whether to take the time to do executioner's chariot. Aside from the pyromancy spells Tichy sells, the robe he drops gives extra souls (more than Tseldora robe). There's also a seed right near the entrance. I really hate that boss fight so I tend to avoid it even on my slow runs.

Witchtree Branch is going to benefit you in the long run, the faster casting will allow less "sitting duck" situations with the Staff of Wisdom. Staff of Wisdom's main point is that you can shoot over obstacles while being safe, it's a very tall staff.

If you're doing a caster run though, personally I would recommend to abstain from Pyromancy unless the boss you're fighting is weak to it (looking at you, Darklurker). You don't get as many casts from Pyromancies as you do with other equally-damaging spells in the other schools of magic.

[Pudding]

u doing full magic huh.......tis all fun and good until u meet.......the blue smelter demon

[TrueArchery]

İlk olarak Fluffy Master tarafından gönderildi:

u doing full magic huh.......tis all fun and good until u meet.......the blue smelter demon

Well, he will use miracles pyros and hexes aswell so it shouldn't be awful.
If it's a speedrun he will ignore him anyways.

[Casul Gamer]

True. Even with hexer/saint's hood you get minimal casts with GLS and you only get one copy until Crypt I think. Heavenly thunder was actually a lot of fun using on The Rotten and Old Iron King. I forgot to mention it earlier, but I think emit force was also nerfed.

I've mainly only used the staff as a melee weapon. It was pretty decent in terms of damage, but it was kind of slow and had durability issues. It seemed like it would be better to just have another spell school as a backup, but I haven't tried the disc chime (I really suck at making that jump lol).

I'm actually a bit unclear on how damage is calculated for casting tools' melee attack. It says spell/strike as the damage type, but I'm not sure if that means the melee attack is strike damage only or a combination of strike and elemental damage.

One thing interesting I learned from watching an all bosses run with hexes (pre-patch) is that they still did decent damage to bosses that were listed as resistant on the wiki. I think Darklurker was the only one they didn't use hexes on because of resistance. So I am curious to see if high damage spells are viable on bosses listed as resistant (instead of doing a second school of magic).

Yeah, I'm not doing an all bosses speedrun. I'm guessing a lot of the DLC bosses are going to be resistant to elemental damage, but I haven't done much of the DLCs. I didn't really have the patience and didn't want to summon either. I know people have said DLCs are the best content of DS2, but I just haven't been in the mood.

[Dusk of Oolacile]

İlk olarak SuperLotus97 tarafından gönderildi:

Yeah, I know all the speedruns use melee (except an all bosses route before the hexes were nerfed)

They used the binocular and parry walking glitches, and the Darklurker skip. Neither of them can be done anymore. There are some old videos from Elajjaz if you're interested, just for fun.

[Hatrix_]

İlk olarak SuperLotus97 tarafından gönderildi:

I forgot to mention it earlier, but I think emit force was also nerfed.

It deals 1.6x the AR of your catalyst, it's not nerfed at all. I made a build around it back when I was poking around the details of how it worked, it can be a pretty powerful spell when used with a catalyst fully spec'd for AR.

Black Witch Staff +10, 50/50 INT/FTH, Dark Clutch Ring + Fire Clutch Ring + Sorcery Clutch Ring + Lightning Clutch Ring.

Super duper fun times.

[Casul Gamer]

İlk olarak Hatrix tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak SuperLotus97 tarafından gönderildi:

I forgot to mention it earlier, but I think emit force was also nerfed.

It deals 1.6x the AR of your catalyst, it's not nerfed at all. I made a build around it back when I was poking around the details of how it worked, it can be a pretty powerful spell when used with a catalyst fully spec'd for AR.

Black Witch Staff +10, 50/50 INT/FTH, Dark Clutch Ring + Fire Clutch Ring + Sorcery Clutch Ring + Lightning Clutch Ring.

Super duper fun times.

Maybe it was just the casts that were nerfed. I seem to recall watching a playthrough where they seemed to have more (unless they had 2 copies of the spell). Emit force seems to do about the same amount of damage as lightning spear. Also, I tried Great lightning spear and the damage didn't seem that much better than lightning spear.

Haha, that does sound interesting. I've been wanting to find where those rings are. I've found one or two, but don't really remember. I'm trying to not look too much up about DLCs until I've played through them, but I've been trying out Dragonrider twinblade and am going to go for the sorcery clutch ring.

I did realize last night that after shrine of winter it gets a lot easier for magic builds. I had been stopping after twin dragon riders because it was often taking 4-5 hours to get there, but now I'm getting better splits with some of my runs. It's still probably at least an hour longer on average for magic runs.

Getting a headshot on guardian dragon with crystal soul spear was great. I didn't know what was a thing until I saw a speedrun where a guy got some headshots on him with a greatsword and RTSR setup.

İlk olarak Dusk of Oolacile tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak SuperLotus97 tarafından gönderildi:

Yeah, I know all the speedruns use melee (except an all bosses route before the hexes were nerfed)

They used the binocular and parry walking glitches, and the Darklurker skip. Neither of them can be done anymore. There are some old videos from Elajjaz if you're interested, just for fun.

It was kind of cool to watch, but the bino boosting sort of made me motion sick D: so I stopped watching. There's a separate category for those glitches now. 16 min vs 53 minutes
http://speedsouls.com/Main_Page.

[Hatrix_]

İlk olarak SuperLotus97 tarafından gönderildi:

Maybe it was just the casts that were nerfed. I seem to recall watching a playthrough where they seemed to have more (unless they had 2 copies of the spell). Emit force seems to do about the same amount of damage as lightning spear. Also, I tried Great lightning spear and the damage didn't seem that much better than lightning spear.

Probably because your catalyst was garbage. Emit Force is actually a pretty good spell all across the board because of it's good splash damage and wide hitbox.

İlk olarak SuperLotus97 tarafından gönderildi:

Haha, that does sound interesting. I've been wanting to find where those rings are. I've found one or two, but don't really remember. I'm trying to not look too much up about DLCs until I've played through them, but I've been trying out Dragonrider twinblade and am going to go for the sorcery clutch ring.

Yeppers. I always use a clutch ring in builds made around an element. No reason not to if you can dodge / block attacks.